He gave me a tolerant look. “I’m aware. I didn’t forget about the essay, but Will Howard said a B’s the best grade you can make if you write about him. Why would you want a B?”
“I don’t want a B—”
“You do if you go in knowing that’s what you’re going to make. Is that what you want to settle for?”
Once I felt better, I’d work harder on my own path to success—good grades, good rider, good girl—but I said, “If you’re leaving it up to me, I’m fine with it. If you want me to write on someone else, tell me now, because it’ll take me all night.”
He put the papers in a folder. “I want you to want to write on someone else, but it’s your call.”
It was an unsatisfying way to end the conversation, but I’d already said good night. I turned to leave.
“Odd, Will Howard mentioning your GPA.”
“Everyone knows about my GPA.”
“Hm.”
I turned back to him. “Nothing’s there, Daddy.” If he started obsessing over Will—and maybe he already was—all my compliance simply wouldn’t matter.
He didn’t look at me.
The only way I knew to distract him was to initiate sex, but tonight the idea turned my stomach. Being compliant was bad enough, but instigating sex made me complicit. I wouldn’t do it again, I thought—and realized with surprise that I’d created a boundary. Daddy might not know it was there, but I did.
“Good night, Daddy.”
He nodded shortly, and without a “Good night, darlin’, love you,” I didn’t have to say I loved him, too.
- nineteen -
IN THE SPACE between registering the earthy aroma of cocoa and Daddy’s fingers playing with my hair, I indulged in the illusion I’d had a safe hot-chocolate childhood.
“Morning, darlin’. Time to shine.” He set the mug on my nightstand and turned on the lamp. “Nervous?” He wore jodhpurs, boots, and a polo shirt, and he smelled of soap and shaving cream. He was The Face, the Olympian, everything he’d always been and more.
“No, sir.”
“Good.” He handed me the mug. “Just be yourself.”
He meant I was to present my persona. My self was someone who’d settle for a B and drink bourbon from a boot and fuck a boy in the back of a pickup truck.
“The crew will be here at seven. Do your own makeup. They’ll touch it up if they need to. What are you doing with your hair?”
I didn’t think I could hold up my arms long enough to braid it again. “Ponytail.”
“That’ll work. Gertrude’s busy, so get your own breakfast. See you downstairs.” He paused by the closet for a final look at the clothes hanging on the door. “Wear a thong so you don’t spoil the line of your leg.”
My self decided to treat me to a splash of bourbon in my cocoa. I should dump the booze soon in the name of compliance—or wow, maybe not. Cocoa and bourbon should be a thing.
Since I was on the floor by the closet, anyway, I checked my phone. Will’s continued silence added to the weight in my chest.
I showered and washed my hair, but when I reached for the conditioner, the bottle was empty, which didn’t bode well for a smooth, sleek ponytail.
Twisting to dry off and again to pass the rib belt around my torso made sweat bead on my upper lip, my forehead, even my scalp. I opened the door to allow steam to escape and cinched the straps. Pain. Stars. And my hair was hopelessly snarled. The wide-toothed comb I always used to work out tangles got stuck. In frustration, I yanked at it, which trapped it more securely.
The bathroom walls shrank toward me. I was hot, light-headed—corkscrewing down into that panicked place I’d landed a week ago.
I gripped the edge of the bathroom counter. This shivering hot-cold mess wasn’t me. I was strong and decisive and determined.
“Then be those things.” My voice was thin as gauze, but the room stopped shrinking.
That was a start. Now breathe. Ow—ribs, lungs, not okay. Breathe, anyway.
Gradually, the room opened up, my runaway heart slowed, and the light-headedness lessened.
Get the comb out of your hair.
I worked at it until sweat rolled down my face, collected on my chin, and dripped onto my chest. The bathroom walls started to close in again.
Panting, I stepped into my room. The breeze coming down from the mountains and through my window was cool. I examined the tangle in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door. Once I got the comb out, I’d still have to unsnarl my hair and subdue it into a ponytail—a task so impossible that when I spotted the scissors I’d left on my desk Friday evening, I picked them up and sheared off the tangle, comb and all.
In my hand, the comb was embedded in an enormous wad of hair. In the mirror, the hair remaining on my head was profoundly asymmetrical. I grasped a snarl on the other side and cut again. That did nothing for the asymmetry, but the feel of the hair separating from its roots was satisfying. My side seared, but I cut again and again, not stopping until I was unfamiliar to myself.
The hair that remained was short and ragged, as though I’d shorn it with a weed whip.
I removed the rib belt and took another shower to wash away sweat and loose hair. Then I toweled off and ran my hands over my hair. It had already dried in spikes and jagged edges and cowlicks.
Daddy wouldn’t like this.
But I did. I was a stranger to myself.
With steady hands, I applied makeup and cleaned up my former hair from the floor, discarding it in my wastebasket. I strapped myself into the rib belt again and dressed, starting with the thong.
* * *
SNN ARRIVED AT seven sharp. Gertrude let the crew in, which meant Daddy was still at the barn. From upstairs, I listened to her offer them coffee or tea.
“Coffee, please,” a woman said immediately, followed by a small chorus of agreement.
Voices came in clearly as people carried equipment inside and faded when they went outside to fetch another load. Through a screen of tree branches, I watched the light move across the pastures and the woods. I caught snatches of the crew’s conversation about rearranging furniture, followed by grunts and thumps.
Gertrude delivered coffee and received the fervent thanks of the desperate.
A minute later, Daddy was walking up from the barn, warm smile already in place.
I checked my backside in the mirror before I went downstairs. He’d been right about the thong—no panty lines—but I suspected he wouldn’t notice.
His study had been transformed into a studio. Cords ran everywhere, lights and reflectors top-heavy on tall, spindly stands. Two cameras fed into monitors. The leather chairs had been moved to the cozy backdrop of the fireplace, where a small fire burned the chill off the room and provided warm ambient light.
Four SNN staffers, none familiar to me, stood drinking coffee and eating tiny muffins from a tray Gertrude had put on Daddy’s desk. Gertrude was chatting with one of them, a man in a plaid shirt.
“Hi,” I said in a voice as warm as Daddy’s smile. “I’m Roan.”
Everyone turned toward me, including Gertrude, who gasped. I stuck out my hand to the closest person.
She shook it. “Jasmine. PA. Production assistant.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shook hands with the rest of the crew: Priya, director of photography; Ruby, sound recordist; Owen, camera operator and plaid shirt enthusiast. Everyone’s expression was polite, glazed. My hair was making an impression.
“Sugar—” Gertrude cut herself off as the front door opened and closed.
“Good morning.” Daddy, still smiling, walked into the study and nearly extended his hand to me before he realized who I was. His smile became ice. He closed his fingers on my wrist. “Excuse us, please.”
He steered me out of the room and down the hall and shoved me into the first room we came to, a bathroom. He shut the door.
“What have you done? What the fuck have you done?” With rough hands, he turned my head this way and that, as
if he might find more hair. “What were you thinking? You’ve butchered yourself.” He released my head with a push. “I signed contracts saying you wouldn’t do this.”
“You said I wouldn’t cut my hair?” No one besides Daddy cared whether my hair was long. He’d wind his fingers through it to tug my head back for a kiss or to control the rhythm with which I sucked his cock.
“Your endorsement contracts have an appearance clause. Unfuckingbelievable. Goddammit, Roan.”
I hadn’t known about any appearance clauses, but they wouldn’t have mattered.
“It’s my hair.”
“We signed contracts,” he said again, so I repeated myself, too.
“It’s my hair.”
From his expression, I halfway expected him to deny that it was.
“You are unfuckingbe—”
Someone tapped softly on the door. “Can I come in?” Gertrude whispered.
“We aren’t through,” he said to me. He opened the door a crack.
Gertrude squeezed through. “We can hear you.”
There was no judgment in her voice, but Daddy’s lips thinned into a slit. He never showed his temper to Gertrude, much less anyone else, and technically the SNN crew members were media. I entertained a brief fantasy in which a puff piece became actual journalism.
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
He turned an accusing eye on me, but I hadn’t made him raise his voice. He’d done that on his own.
Gertrude put her fingertips under my chin and turned my head back and forth, up and down, far more gently than Daddy had. “I’ll run home and see if I have anything that’ll help.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
She left, quiet but urgent, on board with the idea that my haircut constituted an emergency.
Daddy pointed at me. “You are a product.” He’d lowered his voice. “A brand. We signed those contracts based on your image. This isn’t it.”
“It is now.”
He gave me a warning look.
I tried to soften what I’d said. “The sponsors might like it.”
“Like it? Have you seen it?” He squished my face between his thumb and fingers and turned my head toward the mirror.
I’d seen how I looked. I was more interested in how he looked. As clearly as if he were writing a formula on a whiteboard, he was working out how he’d smooth over both the haircut and his reaction. Should he be charming or apologetic, or should he go with worried father?
“Those companies only care if I win,” I said through puckered fish lips.
He released me. “Why doesn’t Jamie Benedict have any endorsement contracts?”
“How should I know?”
“Picture him.”
Jamie was a prince on horseback, but with his pockmarked face and crooked teeth the color of candlelight, no one pressured him to model. No, he got to concentrate on riding.
“So what if the endorsements go away?” I said. “We don’t need the money.”
Daddy’s face was incredulous. “It’s not about income. It’s about exposure for the sport. Endorsements up your value as a candidate for the team. How do you not get this?”
I’d never thought of that. Money wasn’t Daddy’s bottom line. He was about winning. Goals. Career.
I was about those things, too, now. “Can’t you talk to the sponsors?”
“I’ll have to, but there’s a roomful of people down the hall I need to talk to first. And before I do, we need to decide what you’ll tell Vic.”
He’d scripted everything else. He might as well script this, too.
“What do you want me to say?”
“You cut your hair,” he said slowly, putting together the answer as he went, “because long hair is a lot of work. The less time you spend on your hair, the more time you can spend on your horse. Say it.”
I recited the lines.
“All right. That’s good enough for Vic. Not for me. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“It was tangled. I couldn’t get the comb through it.”
“You expect me to believe that? There’s got to be more to it.”
The phantom sensation of his fingers in my hair made my skin ripple, like a horsefly had landed on me.
I whispered my answer. “Wind your fingers in this.”
He went very still. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Wind your fingers in this.’ ” This time the words lilted on my tongue.
His face turned hard and white as a glacier. Without another word, he left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
* * *
I SAT ON the toilet lid and waited for Gertrude, unable to decide what was more exhilarating—the haircut, the reactions I was getting, or the experience of making my voice heard, if only to Daddy. Chopping off my hair was one big “fuck you” he couldn’t do anything about. It wasn’t like he could glue it back on.
I wanted to scream an actual “fuck you” to him, but one live mic of that would end my career regardless of how much good I did the sport. I’d backed him down. That was enough. More than enough. It was everything.
The bathroom door opened. Gertrude came in and hoisted a tackle box onto the vanity.
“Are we sticking fishhooks in my face as a distraction?”
“Wouldn’t help, sugar.” She popped open the lid, revealing an array of products, hairpins, barrettes, and small scissors with pointed blades.
I looked doubtfully from the tools to her smooth ash-blond bob. “Do you use all this?”
“Not every day. But I know what to do with it.” She draped a towel around my shoulders and went to work, gelling and scrunching and trimming. “Why did you do it?”
I tested my interview answer. “Long hair is too much work. The less time I spend on my hair, the more time I can spend on my horse.”
She snipped in silence for several minutes. I hoped my answer would be more convincing in the interview.
“Guess it’ll grow,” she said.
I had no intention of growing it out, but I didn’t want to argue with her.
She stopped snipping. “I would’ve taken you to a salon.”
I hadn’t had time to make an appointment, because cutting my hair hadn’t been a conscious decision. As soon as I saw my scissors, I had to do it—immediately. It was that simple and that complicated.
She rubbed something called hair putty on her fingertips, applied it to my hair, and stood back. “Take a look.”
She’d rearranged what was left of my hair and glued it down using nearly every product in her tackle box. The cowlicks had been subdued. No scalp showed. Objectively, “no bald spots” was about the best that could be said for it. Subjectively, my gapped-up haircut was beautiful. I’d lost my hair and found my power.
“Thanks,” I said. “I like it.”
She looked doubtful. “Oh, sugar.” She removed the towel cape, careful not to get hair on my shirt, and mustered a smile for me. “You’d better go. I’ll see you at lunchtime.”
Vic and Laura had arrived while I’d been in the bathroom. Vic was listening to Daddy, who had opted for worried father, but not too worried because that would concern the sponsors. Since the haircut couldn’t be kept secret, it had to be managed.
“I lost it.” He projected exactly the right amount of rue. “It’s not like me. I apologized, but I was rough on her. Solo parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Nobody could do any better,” Vic said.
“If this is the worst thing she does, you’re lucky,” Laura said. “When my daughter was her age, she was sneaking out of the house to meet her boyfriend.”
Jesus, Laura, don’t help.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Wow.” Laura gave me a bright smile. “That is quite a change.”
Vic had known me longer. “What were you thinking, kid?”
Daddy chuckled weakly. “See what I mean?”
Nothing about the look he gave me
was weak, but I matched it. I’d met him on his own turf and shown him I wasn’t weak, either.
I laughed. “Like I told Daddy, long hair’s a lot of work. The less time I spend on my hair, the more time I can spend on my horse.”
“Can you give me the same answer in the interview and sound like it’s the first time I asked?”
I could forget about real journalism.
Ruby clipped a tiny microphone to my shirt. Jasmine put me in the chair nearest the fireplace, tucked tissues around my collar, and dabbed foundation on my nose. Priya tilted a round white reflector toward me, took a light reading, and adjusted the reflector. Jasmine removed the tissues from my collar and stepped out of frame.
“Quiet,” Laura said. “Let’s get room tone.”
The room fell silent except for the snap of the fire. On the monitor that was turned my way, I saw a girl I didn’t know. To her left, firelight flickered.
“Good,” Laura said. “Vic?”
Vic picked his way through cables and equipment and settled into the chair opposite mine. “Your hair shocked me so much I didn’t ask about your ribs,” he said as Ruby miked him. He was already wearing foundation. He wore it at shows, too, always camera-ready.
“I’m better every day,” I said. “How have you been?”
“Can’t complain, and no one would care if I did.” He looked down at the blue notepaper clipped to the outside of his leather portfolio.
Daddy stationed himself beside the monitor that faced me. I smiled sweetly. He smiled, too, giving off an affectionate “Darlin’, what am I going to do with you?” vibe for the benefit of the crew.
Onscreen, everything looked perfect.
“Everyone ready?” Laura said. “Owen?”
“Rolling.”
The red light on the camera beside the monitor glowed.
“When you’re ready, Vic,” Laura said.
“Three, two, one.” Vic’s voice took on a concerned tone. “Tell me how you broke your ribs.”
So the Haircut That Shook the World wasn’t the lead.
It came up about fifteen minutes in.
Dark Horses Page 22